


In Dire Need

by ZeeCatfish



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Incubus!Cronus, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-08 03:23:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZeeCatfish/pseuds/ZeeCatfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cronus Ampora is an incubus having a hard time gathering the energy he needs to sustain himself, and Bro Strider is a heavy dreamer but a light sleeper. A night started with the intention to feed on sexy dreams ends in an awkward pact with the strangest human Cronus has ever met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Only Dreaming.

There is, supposedly, no shame in an incubus feeding on nothing but heated dreams and masturbation fantasies.

  
That isn’t so much a platitude meant to be washing away the bitter aftertaste on your tongue, the taste of being the voyeur drinking down the subpar sexual energy produced by two teenagers having mutually unsatisfying sex in a van on a chain supermarket parking lot. It’s a mantra, one that is meant to guide hundreds of incubi and succubi around the world away from sticking out their necks too far in the hunt for their next meal.

The knowledge does little to alleviate your general annoyance as you savour the bland, unremarkable taste of the first meal you’ve had in days.

Your name is Cronus Ampora, and you are the oldest son of one of the most influential and illustrious clans of lust demons in the Otherworld. It is only recently you have reached an age where you are meant to take care of your own, and it turns out feeding on human lust is a lot harder than your father made it look.

It isn’t until the couple in the battered old van is done and you’ve consumed every last ounce of desire in the air that you realise how hungry you are, sucking in deep breaths of air similarly to how a toddler might lick an already thoroughly emptied plate to just obtain that last bit of goodness while your stomach churns for more.

You’ve gone too long in between feeding, and it’s leaving you irritable and weak. Even the magic you use to shift into your human shape is waning, forcing you to abandon the hunt for a good lay earlier and earlier to try and find a quicker source to snack on lest it ends up falling away at a crucial moment.

Ok, so shape shifting is supposed to be advanced magic, and your teacher did warn you that there might be repercussions for using it too often; that you’d burn through your reserves before finding a sound strategy to sustain your current lifestyle. But you’ve seen your father hold onto his human form for days on end without any repercussions, and you never had much of an issue holding onto your other shape before in the Otherworld, and you really did think your reserves would be able to hold out at least until you managed to get a good fuck in.

Your stomach growls pointedly.

Energy gathered second hand isn’t strong enough to maintain the basic energy level you need to be able to keep using magic the way you have been, no matter how close you are to the humans while they get their jollies off. It’s through sex, which you can’t exactly ask for in your demon form, you’d get what you need to get your legs back below you, and you’re not sure how much longer you need to be hanging around humans before you’ll find one actually willing to let you in on the action.

With an annoyed huff you watch the young couple shuffle their clothes back on and start the engine of their car, apparently having scratched their itch. Good for them, you think bitterly, feeling utterly betrayed by the lack of satisfaction their low standards in sex provides you with.

Slipping back into the shadows of the alleyway, you take a quick look around to make absolutely sure there aren’t any bums laying around corners to spot you -having to explain to your dad how you accidentally caused an incident where a homeless woman went screaming (and ended up making an entire neighbourhood so superstitious it took weeks before any Otherworlders were able to enter the area without running into humans seeing through their disguises) was embarrassing enough the first time- before jumping up against the wall.

Unlike your shapeshifting magic, which you had to call out deliberately and wield with force, the sudden shift of energy that let your hands and feet find purchase on the smooth paint of the wall rather than be pulled back down by gravity was entirely natural.

With inhuman nimbleness you crawl up the wall, careful to avoid the lit windows. While it’s usually enough to just count on the assumption that humans who will look outside won’t _expect_ to see anything otherworldly creeping around on the side of a building and let the wards between the Otherworld and the human world make sure they really won’t, it’s still not unwise to avoid getting too close into sight.

Turns out, humans are not as bad at noticing things that happen right under their noses as they seem to think they are.

Not that there are a great deal of people looking. It is well past midnight, and while the city may never go to sleep in it’s entirety, enough of the lights are off to make jumping between buildings without crossing over any lit windows stupidly simple.

The air is thick with the scent and taste of the dreaming, desires and fears that wouldn’t otherwise run rampant freely oozing from the sleeping humans’ imagination, but the air is woefully lacking the specific type of lust that you seek tonight.

Vague images accompany the tempting scents wafting from opened windows or ventilation shafts from time to time, negatives from scenarios the details of which you are not entirely privy to, often accompanied by a particularly strong emotion that makes them stand out from innocent lust. Guilt, unreturned affection, loneliness, pining; none of them particularly appetising, like particularly strong spices often applied too generously.

They are poison to you; in too large amounts they would clog your lifestream because you can’t digest them the way you can the thoughts and feelings that you feed on. As a source of energy, dreams are lesser than what you could draw from sex both because they don’t come in the quantity you need and because they are so diluted with garbage, so unsure and feeble compared to the energy of pure sex your father raised you on.

You cringe as a particularly unappealing thread of dreams wraps itself around you, seeped in terror. Like a macabre mist the scent of the nightmare eats at your other senses, intoxicating and overpowering, and you continue your climb upwards before you get drunk of terror. You know there are others who enjoy that sort of thing, who feed on whatever useable can be found in there, but you open your mouth and taste nothing but bile.

You’re gone before you even fully process that you are fleeing, reaching the upper part of the building without thinking through your options on how to get back down until the nightmare dissipates.

There are other dreams around even up here, vaguely sexual in nature, but when it comes to the unweaving of dreams your fingers are like sausages, swollen and clumsy. You know it is possible to peel them open, pull the unnecessary away from the necessary and consume only that small core of lust, but you don’t have the ability to do so, and it makes you angry.

You’re sitting on the windowsill of an abandoned apartment, contemplating whether the long drop down would be worth the pain in your knees if it meant minimising the time spent around the tendrils of nightmare still wafting around when a wisp of something you can’t quite make out catches your attention.

It’s only vague, more a hint than a solid scent, but there is something about it that sends a shiver of excitement down your spine. Whoever it is you are smelling, their lust is purer than you’ve sensed in the human world before and is lures you out like a moth to a flame.

In seconds you’ve crawled upwards to where the scent is at it’s strongest, the top floor. The air is thinner there, less polluted by the dreams of the many, and it is only because of that you can find the root of the intoxicating odour, repressed as it is.

Heavy, strong and oily against your lips, you’re distinctly aware that the taste is different from what your father would seek out, and for a brief moment you wonder if your preference might be different than his, and that you’re only just now finding out. Another wisp of energy pulses in the air tauntingly, and the thought is forgotten.

There is a window, open despite the evening chill, and you don’t waste any time making your way over to it and poking your head inside, not caring especially about the amount of regulations you break just by doing so.

A pair of glassy blue eyes stares back at you dead on.

With a muffled shout of surprise you drop a good ten feet back down, barely registering that the enticing scent around you briefly dips in prominence as the dreamer gains awareness.

Your heart hammers in your chest, but no blue-eyed humans stick their head over the windowsill to double-check what they saw and the silence of the night remains untouched. It is only seconds, before you’ve even had the chance to calm your erratic breath, before the dreamer sinks back into sleep.

The fact that whoever you locked eyes with has not made a move to seek you out after catching you is very weird and it says perhaps more about you than anything else that rather than skedaddle before you even get linked to any possible problems that could arise from this little misadventure, you climb back up and take another (more careful) peek inside.

The glassy blue eyes are still there, staring at you piercingly, but this time you manage to suppress your surprised squeak long enough to realise that they don’t belong to a human being, but to an unnerving looking… doll?

Taking a deep breath and forcibly swallowing down your relief you push the window open further to make space enough to crawl inside, managing to get in while mostly avoiding the creepy blue-eyed ventriloquist puppet sitting primly on the cupboard next to the tv.

There are little lights scattered around the room. Timers, clocks, general buttons that you wouldn’t know the function of on machinery you don’t recognise, and all the lights are making it hard for your eyes to adjust.

Even more of a wear on your focus is the thickness of the scent that drew you here in the first place, oozing through the room like a slowly pulsating bloodstream. You breathe in, and the energy you’ve been hungering for plays at the back of your mouth, simultaneously a taunt and an invitation.

Your eyesight focuses right around the same time it becomes apparent that just because the amount of energy inside is overwhelming, that doesn’t make it pure. Something about the source dreamer is doing something weird to the energy, and while it isn’t repressing the amount of lust charging the air one bit, what amounts you attempt to swallow leave a thick layer of gross residue behind in your own life force.

But that’s ok, you remind yourself as you subtly hack up some of the disgusting mess clogging your everything. This is what you’re an incubus for. Tapping into the source of the quality nourishment of pure lust is what your species was born for.

(And that sudden confidence in your own dream-unweaving skills, you hope, is a breakthrough of sorts rather than bravado inspired by that churning hunger in your belly.)

It is right about now that you’re finally beginning to pay attention to the dreamer himself rather than the assortment of random crap strewn across the room, half of which blinking at you almost like it is making fun of your lack of understanding of human machinery, and the other half obnoxious shades of neon or lethal looking.

He is sleeping sprawled on what looks to you like a couch with problems -but you’re not really an expert on human couches so you can’t say for sure- head rested on a pillow but without even so much as a blanket in sight and clutching a plush toy to his chest. You’re not sure why, but you feel instinctively drawn to it, despite it’s garish neon orange exterior.

You are absolutely one-hundred percent sure that his dreams are ranging somewhere between raunchy and erotic, but his face is strangely stoic, and beyond a slight lump in his also garishly neon hawaii print boxers he doesn’t seem to be especially affected.

Still, the scent enveloping you and pushing, taunting your starved instincts to suck it all down pollution be damned tells you otherwise; whatever he is dreaming of is intense, and if not for the fact that you know digesting the bogus energy his stupid human dreaming habits are mixing in with the nourishment so desperately need would take more magic to digest than it would gain you, you’d be feasting already.

Instead you perch on the armrest of the strange couch, close enough that even you should be able to properly affect him with your powers, and close your eyes.

Without the crazy colours and the blinking lights distracting you, you manage to stop focusing on the physical world and instead reach out with your magic, carefully plucking at the strings of life force.

In it’s purest shape, the human’s emotion is like a tangled coil of thread, one you’ll have to take apart to tell apart the boges energy you can’t use from the few treasured strands which you can so you can follow them to their source.

You frown, slightly annoyed at the amount of tangles and issues your fingers are encountering in their work. You’re not known for your immense patience, and it’s obvious that if this guy has ever had an Otherworldly visitor trying to influence his sexy dreams before at all it must have been a long time ago.

Tugging at the knots that are refusing to come apart, you bite back a curse as you accidentally break off a string of, rage, you think it is. The human won’t really notice anything amiss, but the stink of it is slightly dampening your appetite.

Still, you need to feed and the good scents coming from the lust tightly interwoven with everything else are enough to coerce you into continuing lovingly.  
With some careful fidgeting you pull a depressing cord of regrets away from the cluster where the life-force you _want_ to get your hands on is coming from, and finally flashes of dream begin to leak out. You lean forward to breathe in when-

It’s more sensations than anything else that flood over you as the human’s dream accidentally manages to seep into your consciousness; the feeling of a cold wall against your back while a warm hand runs over your thighs, of a searing hot mouth against your neck and a knee forcing itself against the seam of your pants.

You’re panting hard by the time you’ve managed to pull yourself loose from the dream, a strong flush burning bright on your face.

Interacting with human dreams is necessary for the sake of tapping more energy from them; find what gets them hot and insert it into their minds. Getting overwhelmed enough that you become a participant invited inside the human’s dreams instead of having them dance to your wiles is just poor self-control.

The human is still completely serene and, for all intents and purposes, does not look like he is dreaming of getting ready to fuck someone into a wall.

This time when you reach up to fiddle with the knots and twists in the string in front of you your fingers shake, and you steel yourself for the next opening to appear. You didn’t get as much energy as you would have had you remained in control, and while this particular dreamer produces much stronger stuff than you’re used to (your dad has a thing for treacherously mild tastes with a strong backlash, but this human tastes like upfront forcefulness and you’ve never encountered a taste like this before, but you think you might like it a lot, you really do), with how long you’ve been going hungry you were hoping to at least get enough to keep you going for a while.

What you want is to get inside the human’s head long enough to get him going and then tap into the outgoing flow while the knots you’ve just untangled are out of the way, unable to taint the energy you’re looking for. It won’t be as pure as what you’d get if you were fucking him, but considering how those kinds of attempts have been working out for you so far it seems this is the best you’re gonna get tonight.

You carefully unwind knot after knot, trying to swallow your annoyance at the realisation that you fully lost the leak you managed to find before when you got _distracted_. Despite getting there once, tapping back in is complex and boring, like the dent you made before was never there at all.

Of course this means that you manage to start zoning out (and accidentally breaking another chord of annoyance, _fuck_ ) exactly at the right time to be overwhelmed again when you accidentally pull the next gap wide-open.

The scene has shifted, and you have just enough time to berate yourself for not taking into account that _of course_ the human would apply natural progression to his dreams before you feel the back of your skull slam into the wall as your spine arches in response to the unexpected set of _fingers up your ass_.

While that does somewhat shake the parameters of what you were expecting to find in this particular dream a little -normally, guys tended to go for the vagina in their sleep-haze and save the edgier stuff for the fantasies they were more actively steering. But then, _normally_ the imaginary partner role you’re slipping into involves more breasts and less penis-, your sleeping partner is surprisingly conscious of how to work his fingers, and intriguingly focused on doing things that don’t seem to be involving his cock near any of your orifices.

You ponder on the unusual involvement in his fictional partner’s pleasure for all of half a second before a warm, deep-throated laugh right by your ear distracts you and sends shivers down your spine.

It’s not the sex itself that fuels an incubus’ life energy, nor is it how your species reproduces, but that doesn’t mean you’re not receptive. If you were Eridan you might wonder if it has something to do with the biology of being able to better sleep with humans or if it’s just an Otherworlder pastime existing beyond the laws of Earth logic, but seeing as you are not Eridan you instead try really hard to remind yourself you’re supposed to be trying to untangle yourself from the dream instead of letting those fingers do really nice things to you.

It is working about as well as one might expect, and you’re almost ready to just give yourself over to the dream and not worrying about the extra energy you could have gotten instead of this fantastic but tragically fictional lay when you suddenly become horrifically aware that out in the real world, your body has not gone unaffected by the change in moods.

You can feel the _very real_ warm skin under your _very real_ fingertips, and get only long enough for a no less real spike of fear to hit you before the fantasy spun around your awareness pops apart like a soap-bubble and you find yourself looking straight into a pair of uncanny amber coloured eyes, stretched wide in surprise.

While your mind was preoccupied otherwise, you find your body has crawled on top of the human, straddling his waist and rested one hand on his stomach tentatively, right where his shirt is bunched up a little below the bizarre orange plush.

And then, before you can even manage to finish a single mental ‘oh fuck’, you are flipped onto your back with your arms crushed above you, trapped under one surprisingly powerful human hand, and there is something very sharp pointed right under your jaw.

Well shit.


	2. Promises with pricetags

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some people consider bad days 'days on which a lot of terrible things keep happening, most of which are not your fault'. Cronus considers bad days days on which he is not physically stapled to the floor to prevent him from going out and doing something incredibly stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the lovely [squigglehaunt](http://squigglehaunt.tumblr.com/), who caught some of my amazingly idiotic consistency errors.

The heavy hand clamped around your wrists is pulling at the skin uncomfortably, and you swear you can feel your bones creaking in protest at the human’s rough treatment.

As if just squeaking wouldn’t have been embarrassing enough, the knee he plants right into your gut knocks the wind out of you and twists whatever sound your throat was trying to push out into a breathless ‘nyeh’. You try to catch a better glimpse of the flashing steel pointed at the soft, vulnerable flesh right under your jaw.

It is only when you swallow thickly and the motion forces the tip of the blade -every bit as wickedly sharp and shiny as it looked when it was flashing through the air- through the skin stretched over an adam’s apple that should definitely not have been as prominent as it is that you realise you’re still wrapped into your human form.

You can feel the sting and the single drop of blood as it wells up and then slides down the side of your neck, and resist the urge to swallow again while a high-pitched whine escapes your mouth.

For a few moments it is almost entirely silent except for the stupid noises you can’t quite keep all muffled while the human, gracefully quiet in the way most large predators are right before they pounce, stares down at you with a calculating look on his face. Occasionally his eyes flick away from your face to search around the room as if he is trying to figure something out.

It’s fine, you try to reassure yourself. Everything is fine. If this guy were, in fact, a huge predator, he’s already leapt. You don’t need to wait for him to pounce, because he is already sitting on top of you, claws out, and all you need to do now is sit still and wait for him to decide whether he is a cat playing with a mouse or a dog going straight for the throat.

The analogy derails on you like a freight train off a cliff. You remain uncomforted.

“Alright”, the human starts, shifting his position to relieve some of the pressure on your gut. Your newfound freedom makes it easier to breathe, easier to form full coherent sentences if you tried, but a slight warning push back down when you try to wriggle away from the knife hovering at your neck tells you this change isn’t going to improve your chances at escape any. “Ignoring the fact that my fantastic abs must’ve been singing the hallelujah at you and I couldn’t _possibly_ fault you for trying to cop a feel regardless of how poor a burglar’s strategy it is, tell me this; how did you get in here.”

His voice is deceptively sharp, and if you hadn’t been inside his dream, with that same voice laughing into your ear only minutes ago (if that), you would have assumed his sleep had been feigned.

You must not have eaten as much as you hoped you did, because something about his voice sends a shiver down your spine, and as far as situations in which it is appropriate for your mind to drift back to the feeling of fingers working their way inside of you go, ‘cornered and pinned with a knife to your neck’ ranks impressively low.

“I…” you begin, only to cough awkwardly and attempt to wriggle backwards as the tip of the knife grazes your skin again. The mattress gives below your head, but the knife follows right after you, right up until the human seems to realise what you are trying to do and pulls the sharp edge of the blade away from your skin.

You let out a sigh of relief, though the way he is now deliberately hovering it in front of your face is making you become significantly more aware that one stabbing motion downwards would make for a pretty quick end to your story.

There are another few moments of silence before you remember you were asked a question. “I… the, uh, the window?” you stammer out, stumbling over the annoying elongated vwee noises you picked up from your old man’s speech patterns and never quite managed to get out.

The knife swoops down like a guillotine’s blade, stopping so close to your neck that you can feel the blade pricking a second hole into the skin, only millimetres next to the previous one. “Bullshit,” he barks, voice more clipped and controlled than before. “The building’s got thirty floors and no balconies, nice try. Now how the fuck did you get in.”

Wriggling uncomfortably you make an attempt to struggle out of the human’s hold, only to have him press his knee back down, knocking the wind right back out of you. With terrifying deliberation he twirls the knife between his fingers in a silent threat. It’s possibly the stupidest thing to focus on in what might be the last few seconds before some asshole human in fake hawai’i tourist print boxers stabs you to death, but the sudden realisation that not only is the knife’s handle the same obnoxious shade as the orange monstrosity he was sleeping with but also the same shape as it’s protruding nose refuses to leave your mind.

The thought that you are going to die by plush toy nose is causing a hysterical giggle to bubble up your throat.

You’re honestly not sure what to tell the human -you _did_ come in through the window- and he seems to realise that waiting for an answer is futile, because he sits back a little and squints at you, brow creased in what you think is probably plain old annoyance.

“You know, I just decided I don’t actually give a fuck-,” he says, putting the knife down next to him and reaching out for something outside of your range of vision, hand clamping down on your arms mercilessly as you experimentally wiggle around, and your wrists are going to bruise so bad, “-and am just gonna let the cops take care of this whole mess. Now hold still you little sonovabitch.”

That’s right about where the gravity of the situation begins to really sink in. Without the immediate threat of being gutted like a fish for making even a twitch in the wrong direction your mind is left free enough to begin wandering to the possible outcomes of your current predicament.

The danger of the human juridical system has been something you’ve been peripherally aware of for as long as you can remember, if only because unlike most of the everyday cautions you were raised on, this one was a death sentence.

After all, just because you can technically adopt a human shape for select periods of time doesn’t mean you are human. Without a human identity and with proof of you breaking and entering they can easily lock you up longer than your energy reserves can sustain you. And how would you explain to a jailor that you can’t live of human food, that you need to leave your cage to suck out your fellow inmates wet dreams?

“Wait-” you croak out, but your protest goes completely ignored as the human loops the rope he pulled from somewhere beside you around your wrists and the wooden bars of what passes for a headboard with an unfair amount of deftness, considering he is only using the hand not used for pinning your arms down to do it.

He tugs, and the rope tightens around the skin of your wrists, pulling your arms up further while he releases his iron hold on you. The ropes are a mercy in comparison to the crushing pressure he was exerting earlier, and this does give you some wiggle space, but you are now also tied to the headboard of some guy’s bed, and he is pulling out his phone.

“Waitwaitwait, hold on!” Your voice is constricted with fear, coming out a couple pitches higher than you want it to, and the gears in your mind are frantically spinning, struggling to come up to a solution to this mess. “Hold up, hold up, I got this. No, I- Okay, so I really did come through the window, please don’t call the police?”

If you weren’t quite so preoccupied by the deep-rooted desire to not die one way or another right about now, you might have taken a moment to appreciate the deadpan expression on the human’s face as he looks back down at you. It’s similar to the face your dad makes whenever he discovers you’ve done something he doesn’t approve of and feels you’re past the point where words can express how stupid you are.

“If there was some convincing argument in there,” the human drawls, “I’m afraid it went straight over my head.”

You laugh nervously and bite your lip until it bleeds. “I can explain?”

The human gives you another slow once-over, then lowers the phone in his hands with a predatory grin on his face. “Impress me.”

A trait you’ve always envied in your father is his ability to deliver his lies with a flourish and grace that made the recipient devour the pile of bullshit he served like it was an especially delicious dessert. The confidence of a king who knows he’s won his battles before the tally is even in, your teacher once described the attitude your father used to charm his way around, to carve a seat in court in between demons much older and more naturally gifted than he himself had been.

You did not inherit the skill.

The sound of your heartbeat thrums in your ears, and you desperately attempt to think of something, anything to get you out of this mess that wouldn’t cause another embarrassing scandal.

“I uh, climbed in through the window because,-” you pause and swallow, drawing nothing but blanks when you try to think of any way at all to fix the mess you’re in. After a few moments of silence the human raises the phone again and presses a button, the beeping noise of the dial more damning than anything you can remember hearing before. “Because I am a demon who can climb walls and your dreams smelled nice,” you blurt out.

The highlight of your next visit to the clan home will probably be your old man viciously ripping your tail off and feeding it to you, you think mournfully while your lower back contracts in sympathy pains.

“You’re… a wall-scaling demon,” the human repeats flatly, looking down at you with barely concealed amusement, “And you climbed in through my window to get a whiff of Eau de Strider dream. Yes, I totally believe you now.”

It’s only when you are midway a sigh of relief that it occurs to you that he is probably sarcastic, and you might have just upgraded from a burglar to a particularly skilled nutcase.

“I,” you begin a sentence, in the hopes that something will occur to you. When it doesn’t, you close your eyes and shoot a quick prayer to the Fortunes that you are not making the biggest mistake in your woefully short, tragically underlived life. “...I can prove it.”

Without waiting for an answer you let your awareness of the physical world slip away, returning to the manifestation of energy flowing all around you. This time it’s not his life-force you direct your attention to (it is more rigid when he is awake, less a tangle of strings and more a forcefield), but your own. Like taking off a coat, you shrug off the peel of magic shrouding you.

You can feel the threads of the cocoon-like glamour around you unbinding with some melancholy; with your current reserves rebuilding a new glamour will be a long, harrowing process, especially without the candlefire hope for payoff you still naively believed in when you first started hunting in the human world to feed into the creation.

When you open your eyes again the room around you is much clearer than before, your now much better night-vision evening out the contrast between the darkness and the obnoxious little lights all around and giving you a clear view of a messy collection of machinery, some of which looks only half-finished.

To his credit, the human doesn’t _look_ especially surprised. Still, it doesn’t take being a minor fearmonger demon lurking under the stairs to feed on the momentary panic of jittery minds to be able to sense you’ve thrown the human off his guard. You suppose something can be said for small victories, however much or little it may mean.

While it wasn’t any problem in your human shape, the large, jagged horns your natural form sports make laying back a lot less comfortable and it takes some squirming to angle yourself a little more comfortably without having to twist your neck so far you can’t look the human in the eye anymore.

Momentary discomfort out of the way you return your full attention to the human, who is looking at you with open interest, eyes flitting from your horns to what parts of your skin -now tinged an ashy purple- is showing, to your pointed ears.

A curious mumble of emotions spikes, but they’re too mixed to pick out more than a wisp of attraction and something you think might be either victoriousness or greed, you can’t quite tell.

In a subconscious reaction to your uncertainty your tail flicks.

The human’s reaction is instant; grasping for the weapon beside him with a motion that sings of years of practice, he turns as far as his humanly unimpressive limberness will let him with the knife held up near his chest defensively, only to look mildly miffed to discover the fluffy pom at the end of your tail swishing from side to side nervously.

Looking between your face and your tail the human seems to contemplate something. “So, for the moment I’m going to believe you on the basis that I find the existence of wall-climbing demons more likely than you being a really good costume artist with a teleportation-based wardrobe hidden somewhere in those tight pants. Congrats. Tell me how this makes your situation look any better.”

“Uh.”

You’re not sure what to say to that.

“You’re a wall-crawling demon who climbed in through the window because I smell nice to, what, eat me? Watch me sleep? Lewdly caress the sublime pinnacle of manliness that is my chest? Give me something good, bro.”

“What, no! Dreams! I said your dreams smell nice, not you!” you protest while your face contorts into an ugly face of disgust. What does he think you are, some kind of flesh-eating monster? H

e narrows his eyes at you, but his spirits have lightened and at the very least you don’t think he’s as angry with you anymore as you figured he was before. “Are you saying I stink?”

You glare at him. “That’s _so_ not my point, fuckin’ Hel. I’m just saying you were having some real nice dreams and I was trying to catch a whiff to sustain myself. It’s not like you needed the energy.”

His expression evens back out, and you consider that he might have been joking. “So, you always feel up the folks whose dreams you’re munching on or am I just irresistible?”

An indignant flush spreads over your face. “I didn’t mean to! I mean, I shouldn’t have, but I was hungry and I got kind of caught up and-”

You smell arousal. It’s not particularly strong, nothing like during the humans’ dreaming sleep, but the distinct tang focuses your senses like blood in the water. You’re not sure what did it, but something kickstarted the human’s dick and you’re intrigued.

“And?” the human prompts, forcing your thoughts back out of the gutter.

You look over his face, trying to find something to hint at whatever is happening inside his head, but you find nothing. “And I got carried away? Look chief, I can’t help it that I’m not great at remembering to control my body while your dreams were pulling me in. Which is also not my fault, just so we’re clear.”

“You were… in my dreams?” the human is giving you another one of those calculating looks, but with the thrumming undertone of arousal you _know_ he is feeling the look feels less judgemental and more inviting, so you attempt a shaky smile.

You realise the knife has never returned to hover over your neck threateningly. Instead the human is twirling it around in front of his chest, where it seems less immediately deadly. Nevertheless, you’re pretty sure that given sufficient cause that knife can go back to being your least favourite thing in the room within seconds.

“Well, yeah. I mean, normally us dream-eating types try to influence the dream from the outside and just feed that way, but what can I say? You’re a creative guy, and who can blame a guy like me for wanting to get a closer look, right?”

You get another flat look in return, though you’re pretty sure you can see the corner of his mouth do _something_ , and you’re just fine with assuming that’s his way of smiling for the moment.

“You never give any straight answers, do you?” he asks, voice too neutral for you to be able to tell if that’s supposed to be a compliment or criticism of some kind of personal failing.

“I’m not trying to hide anything, chief,” you tell him frankly. “Matter of fact, the stuff I’m telling you is supposed to be pretty hush-hush among humans. I’m kind of breaking the rules here, it’s taking a toll on my fragile mental state of being. Mind putting that thing-” you motion your head at the knife best you can-” down somewhere that is, like, preferably not on or inside me, for the sake of sparing my fragile soul any further trauma and all that?”

“Uh-huh, how about… no,” the human drawls, and this time there is _definitely_ something wicked playing over his face. “You see, I’m not really profiting any from letting you skip off into the sunset as is.”

You try for a charming grin. “So let me up out of the goodness of your heart?”

“Nice try, potshot.”

“Potshot?”

“Your new nickname, for all the cheap shots you keep tossing out to distract me. Like now. So how about we get back to the topic at hand and you explain to me in as little words as possible why I should let you wriggle away to freedom.” You can see him readjusting his grip on the knife’s handle, but you’re not sure if that’s suggesting anything or just a side-effect of the quality of the bright orange plushie material. “Take your time. I’ve got all night.”

You sigh and feign your best pout, for all the good it does you. “If I promise you I won’t run off, will you at least untie my arms? I mean, I can dig restraints, yeah? I'll even take it rough if that’s what you’re into, but I’d like more actual sex involved with the fin stuff, if you know what I mean.”

He raises an eyebrow, managing a contemptuous look that you think even your old man would have respect for. “You know, I’ve heard a folk story or two on demons and making deals with them. They’re not exactly doing you any favours in convincing me.”

“Oh come on,” you whine, “you’re gonna believe fairy tales instead of me? I mean, seriously? We’re in the human realm, I couldn’t even break any promises if I wanted to because of the whole Old Code bullshit. Besides, I can’t exactly get out and leave you running around with knowledge you shouldn’t be spreading around, right?”

“Oh? You gonna try and stop me from talking then? Mess around in my head some more?” A

little voice in the back of your head starts shouting warnings at the calculating look the human is sporting at that. It occurs to you that maybe you should have tried a less honest approach to all of this.

“Well, I’m a reasonable guy, see? I could call in some favors, get a friend to remove your memory of this evening and be done with it-” -you’re pretty sure Aranea would object to being called your friend. You’re also pretty sure she’s not gonna help you without alerting the authorities of your screwup- “or we could forget the brainwiping parts and make a pact instead.”

“…A pact.”

It’s not so much formulated as a question, but you’re not sure what else to take it as. You are acutely aware that your wrists have not been released.

“Yeah! Like, you keep your mouth shut, and I follow whatever terms you set in return. You get to keep your memory without the danger of getting fried, and no authorities need to stick their nosey noses anywhere.” Not that the chance of complications during the brain wipe is very high, but the human doesn’t need to know that.

Somehow, if the look in his eyes is anything to go by, you think he knows anyway.

“By which you mean, I buy you a ticket out of trouble and you, what was it, ‘do whatever I want’?”

The sirens in your head start blaring. “Not how I would have put it, chief. My pride is hurting over here. But yeah, that’s the gist of it, I guess?”

“Awww, your poor ego. Do you need me me to kiss it better for you,” he mocks you, but something of that warm, deep and sexy velvet slips back into his tone and you shiver noticeably. He cracks a suggestive grin and your tongue flicks out to wet your lips, which feel uncomfortably dry all of a sudden.

“Wouldn’t be complaining about that, chief.” You figure it’s worth a try. “In fact, I’d say kissing is a lot better a thing to be doing with your mouth than running it to other humans, if you get my drift.”

He snorts. “You’re an incubus, right? A fucking sex demon, and kissing is the best thing you’re able to come up with? Mouths are pretty flexible in their participation in funky business, you know.”

A sudden vivid image flashes through your mind, an image where the human is between your legs with his hot, wet mouth on your- well then. You swallow thickly.

Laughing softly, a deep rumbling noise that seems to be coming from his chest more than his throat, the human leans forward. “I’m getting the impression there is a lot I could teach you about what someone can do with their mouth.”

You make an unintelligible warbled noise resembling a squeak more than whatever word died in your throat -your throat, which is feeling so, so dry all of a sudden- and your tail flicks and curls itself around the human, what little strength it has apparently trying to draw him nearer to you.

“So,” the human is almost purring, running the hand that is somehow not holding the knife anymore -when did he put that down? You don’t think you care as much as you should- over the fabric of your shirt. “I don’t go spreading the word on your demon business to any humans, and you do whatever I want, right?” The suggestion in his tone sends a pulse of heat right between your legs and your breath hitches.

Suddenly being pinned down the way you are isn’t looking as bad anymore, all things considered. “Yeah,” you manage to wrangle out, “yeah, that’s about right.”

“We got a deal then,” he says and you think it’s a question, but the way his fingers are trailing over the seam of your pants, a butterfly touch on the inside of your thigh is making it hard to focus on things like pacts and their semantics.

“Yes, yes,-” you whine impatiently, wriggling in place in the hope of making some actual touching happen, “-we got a deal. Pact. Promise. Whatever. Can you just please do something?”

The human does something.

‘Something’, as it is, turns out to not quite be what you were hoping for, because instead of the physical contact you wanted he draws away from you and he doesn’t seem to be looking at you anymore.

In one fluid movement he releases your wrists and rolls off of you, fishing the missing knife from right beside your head and grabbing it’s orange, plush sheath from somewhere on the floor and sticking the knife into it’s face, it’s handle returning to looking like little more than a suggestively shaped nose jutting out impudently from the face of an exceedingly stupid creature.

Your brain stutters while trying to puzzle together what just happened, and all you can do is stare up at him uncomprehendingly as he turns to face you with a sharklike grin playing over his face. “

So,” he starts, and there is something about his tone that you’re pretty sure you do _not_ like, “is there an automatic expiration date on these pact things, or did you just sign yourself over to be my errand boy for the foreseeable future. Because you know, Potshot, ‘doing whatever I want’ seems kind of a broad definition.”

Slowly your mental gears crank back into alignment, kickstarting your higher brain functions into realising just how fucked you are, and just how little dicks this instance of fuck actually involves as of right now.

You try not to let the dread turning your veins from fire to ice show on your face. Going by his gleeful expression, it’s not working.

“Entire library sections devoted to the import of wording in demonic pacts, and it’s the _demon_ who fucks up. Fucking incredible.” You’re pretty sure he’s trying not to laugh.

In the human world, whatever you agree to becomes a law you can’t break without shredding your own existence. And you get the feeling you just signed a deal with a human who might as well be the devil himself.

What the fuck did you get yourself into this time.

And more importantly, how’re you going to get out?

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to just be a porn oneshot, but has since grown into an elaborate AU involving Otherworld politics and ridiculous pacts by demons who do not know how to pact. And also a fair deal of sex.
> 
> I do hope you like your rides messy!


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